Shadow in the Black

Monday, March 31, 2014

I have joined Gallente Faction warfare and left the worm
hole. Having just moved inot a C5 a
month ago this may come as a surprise.
However, the friends that pulled me into that corp left de to issues
with the leasdership. That story is a
different one but I agree with their reasons for leaving and feel that it is
sufficient evidence for me to leave as well.
After a brief period of looking I decided to try to join a corp led by
fellow podcasters and community\y members, Kirith Kodachi of Broadcast from the
Ninveah, Ashterothi of High Drag, and Marcel D. creator of the Aura app for
android pones.

I joined Aideron Robotics late on a Thursday night and had
to immediately go to bed. But my first
weekend was a blast. Frigates and
destroyers are ship classes that I mostly overlooked in my Eve career. This is mainly because I don’t pvp much, and
because those two ship types aren’t
useful for very long in missions, especially if an older member of your
corp is willing to take you along on level 2-4 missions. But now that I’m in Faction Warfare (FW from
here on) it seems I will be almost
exclusively flying these classes of ships.
This is great, as mastering these types of ships is essential for
building a base in understanding PVP and reacting to situations. Aideron Robotics does have corp fits of
higher class of ships, however, for completing complexes in FW zones these are
usually the best option due to the restrictions of the acceleration gates Although I have previous dabbled in FW
before, it was before the overhaul that occurred in Inferno, and I am enjoying
learning about one of the last parts of eve I have not tried before.

TL:DR My walk about continues, I am out of the wormhole and
into faction warfare \O/.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

I have recently decided to switch corps in EVE and have
Joined Resurrection Ventures of Un.Bound alliance. So far its been pretty good. My first 3 days all consisted of pvp which
was a great introduction for someone wanting to learn pvp better. The first day I raced 27 jumps to get to the
new group who had just tackled an archon on a high-sec hole in ac2.
Although I got there before the entrance collapsed it was crit and the
Bhalgorn that was there was needed more, when it jumped in the hole collapsed. I was able to listen to most of the 1 hr
22min fight on comms. The bhalgorn made
it in about 45 minutes into the fight.
We killed the Archon, a 1b Legion, 2 domi’s, 2 augorors and several
other ships, 9 in total, and only lost the bait deimos in our 5-7 man gang that
was in the fight.

The next day one of our scouts found to covetors
mining, I moved into position and our
scout got tackle on both. Myself, a HIC
and another dps ship dropped we killed
both miners and their pods, one of which was ~1b isk and the other 200-300m we
also blew up 4-5 jet cans full of ore probably worth a bit as well.

The third fight was the most intense for me. I was heading to the home hole from highsec,
which required going through a C2 which I had been told was inactive. However, when I jumped in there was a drake
on D-scan. I was already in warp to the
exit when I mentioned it on comms. I was
told they had just killed a drake there 30 minutes before hand and were
surprised to hear there was another. I
jumped into the C4 on the other side and refit for cloaked warping. There were only 2 combat sites on scan, the
first had several wrecks and rats but no drake, the other had only
sleepers. I warped back to the first
site. After about 2-3 minutes the drake
showed up. By this time a corp mate in a
falcon was ready to jump in from highsec, and a dps loki from the c4 was on the
c4 side of the c2-c4 worm hole waiting to jumps. I had the falcon come into the c2 and warp to
the site where the empty site at 100, and I warped there as well. I knew the drake was within 10 of the beacon
for the combat site, so I warped back at 10km and had the falcon aligned. When I landed the drake was 8700m away from
me, I had the loki jump and hold cloak.
I declocked primed my disruptor and started locking. The drake started to align. I wasn’t used to the decloak timer so I had
to try 3-4 times to prime my mod and lock the drake, I got him! The falcon
landed and started jamming the drake and sleepers while the loki warped in. We didn’t get the pod, but we killed the
drake, the loki did about 24k damage, I did just under 5k and the falcon put on
2-3k. It was the first time, literally
in years that I’ve tackled and killed anyone, it was very exciting.

I’m quite pleased with how the group works together on
comms, they seem to understand each others directions very well, and know when
to “shit up comms” and when to be quiet and take orders. They also seem to hunt a lot, so I’m sure I’ll
have many more stories to tell in the comoing weeks and months as I learn to
pvp and live in dangerous unknown parts of space…

Min

TL:DR I heard people killed stuff, I killed stuff, I tackled
and killed stuff. It was a good day.

Monday, October 28, 2013

That's right I got one!!! Its awesome and teh in game items are great! Along with the implant to get a golden pod in game, you get some clothing items, a special version of teh Amarr Magnate Frigate, and several collector's items to commemorate teh winners of the alliance tournaments as well as some pieces of history like key to the first player station ever created, lost sovereignty bills, and more!

Sunday, August 25, 2013

I had planned an op for saturday night before podside only to find out that another FC had done so as well. Being that he had indeed scheduled his op before I had posted I asked if I could be teh back-up FC which worked out well. In fact is a good thing I was there because the Cyno pilots nad black ops battleship pilot he had arranged for did not show up. So I got to fill both roles and drop our fleet on the target, which was disposed of fairly easily, although we did lose 2 or 3 ships to our opponents. What's the old saying? "you can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs". We accomplished the strategic objective , however, and managed to get on another easy kill before docking up.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

That’s where I’m at now.
I have signed up for the FC program in LI3. Without giving to much away, I plan to
chronicle my journey. This first post
will be some info on how LI3F fleet training works, and my experience with
FC-ing and being a fleet member in EVE thus far.

LI3F’s FC Program:

As far as I can tell, I get to start on the bottom
rung. When accepted as an FC Fleets I
take out will be covered by Alliance SRP if the ships flown are small. As I progress up the FC ranks the SRP will
cover larger and larger ships, and my FC ships will be covered at a higher
percentage until the ship, my clone, and some implants will all be eligible for
SRP.

Fleet Experience:

LOL not much… with my main Min, from fall 2009 until summer
2012 when I joined MPX I had been on one kill, a Brutix fflown by Volatile
Power, he had can flipped me and my 2 corp mates and I killed him. The only other kill I had been a part of was
an itty 3 I killed with an alt after some corp mates and I went can flipping
ourselves. I didn’t have a point, and my
wolf killed him in 3 volleys before my fleet could arrive to join in. 281 days ago I also killed a random pod that
apparently had set autopilot to low sec, where I found it, but hadn’t set destination to a station so it
was 13km off a gate. (1337PVP \O/ not my proudest moment by any stretch of the
imagination)

Since joining MPX I’ve been on some CFC flees and joined in
on more kill mails, but haven’t done any solo work. I’ve sort of been in charge of some
ratting/mining fleets but that hardly counts as FC work.

Step 5: Celebrate Victory or continue to work for the
community in defeat

Step 1: Platform

Improving Customer Relations:

I choose to discuss this issue because I feel
that many players are dissatisfied with their experiences with EVE-Online
Customer Service, also known as the petition process. I believe that many of the complaints arise
from a lack of understanding of, and a lack of clarity of the petition process. Most players seem to feel that their
experiences are largely decided by which GM they deal with and less about which
solution is correct.

Improving Nullsec

Many residents of Nullsec desire
change in the mechanics of sovereignty.
Several main factors effect sovereign alliances financially, ore/ice
Mining, PVE, Moon Harvesting, PVP, Sovereignty bills, system maintenance. Many solutions to fix the “Problems” of
nullsec focus on the idea that large alliances and coalitions are currently
able to hold “too much space”, and that mechanics should be altered so that
there are areas of “no-mans-land” where new groups can come and test their
metal without instantly being stomped or assimilated into an existing
alliance/coalition.

I agree with this viewpoint and
believe that larger numbers of smaller populations dotting the landscape of eve
would increase PVP opportunity and grow
the “isk sink” that is PVP warfare. My
solution would increase the opportunity for both PVE and PVP activity, bring
income into the pockets of the line members and limit the size of space a
single entity could claim, or would need to claim.

New Player Experience

After beginning my youtube series on tutorials for the new
player experience I ran into two main problems.
First, I had a lack of RL financial funds to keep the project going,
although, I do plan to return to the project shortly. And secondly, and more importantly, boredom
and the feeling that the tutorials are misleading in regards to what players
can hope to experience in Mining/PVE/PVP/Scanning/Marketing/Fitting and other
aspects of the game. I propose that as a
CSM I would work closely with CCP and the eve community to find improvements to
the system, which would include, but not be limited to, the addition of podding
and clone maintenance to the tutorial system.

Saving High sec

Many of those who run as candidates
for CSM who decide to label themselves for a part of the game such as Nullsec,
wormholes, lowsec, or faction warfare representatives tend to talk of high-sec
as a bad place for simple people to live.
I believe that those who live in high sec do so for many reasons, other
than as a place to hide from PVP-ers or to bot.
Some of the issues that face high sec are the war-dec mechanics, mercenary work, and cash in-flows. Simply put, the old war mechanics were
broken, the new ones were broken in a different way, and CCP needs CSM members
who can help field viable options from the populous as well as provide their
own suggestions. Mercenary work goes
hand-in-hand with the concept of war decs.
As a CSM member I would work with leaders in the mercenary business,
those few that are left or would like to return, as well as “victims” of
mercenaries, to change the existing mechanics so that mercenary work was a
viable option once again without it feeling like the victim is being griefed.

Dust514

As a producer and frequent contributor on the Podside
Podcast I have had the fortunate to hear a lot about the upcoming release of
Dust514. I am excited about the addition
of the game and hope it is successful. I
hope to work closely with the Dust community to
ensure that CCP hears their desires as well as working with eve players
to make sure everything is balanced and fair, but most importantly fun. The last thing I want is for eve players to
feel that playing dust is a burden they must endure, or that it’s a financial
burden they must pay to keep control over their experience if Eve.

Rebalancing Risk Vs. Reward

I
believe that pilots who put the most at risk should reap the most reward. I do not, however, necessarily think that
High-sec activities should be nerferd,.
Quite the opposite, I think null-sec activities should be more rewarding
and exclusive. It is possible to use a faction battleship, a carrier, or a
super-carrier in the same types of sites and make equal amounts of
isk/salavage/loot in the same amount of time.
This is should not be the case.
There are many instances where in high, low, and null where activities
are not properly balanced within their respective security levels not to mention when compared
to different security ranges (ie high vs low, low vs null). This is not only the case for PVE activities
such as ratting, but true for ore/ice/moon mining and exploration.